The Faber Pocket Guide to Opera (5 page)

CD: Janet Baker (Caesar); Charles Mackerras (cond.).
EMI 769 760 2.
Sung in English, with modern instruments.

Jennifer Larmore (Cesare); René Jacobs (cond.).
HMC 90 1385–7.
For a more authentic approach and a complete score, based on the 1724 edition.

Rodelinda

Three acts. First performed London 1725.

Libretto by Nicola Haym

An instant success when first performed this opera also led the modern revival of interest in Handel’s stage works – the production at the University of Göttingen in 1920 was the first any of his operas had received since 1754!
Its plot, drawn from a play by the seventeenth-century French tragedian Corneille, reflects a contemporary fascination with the figure of a beleaguered solitary woman who remains firm in her virtue.
Although the plot is convoluted and confusing, the characters of Eduige and Grimoaldo stand out in the generally
black or white moral world of Handelian opera as characters of considerable psychological complexity and mixed motives.
In other respects, it follows the ‘A loves B who loves C’ trail commonly taken in baroque opera.

Plot

When the old King of Lombardy dies, a war of succession ensues between Bertarido and Grimoaldo.
Grimoaldo appears to have triumphed and Bertarido is supposed dead.
His wife Rodelinda mourns him, and rejects Grimoaldo’s offer of marriage, even though it would restore her to the throne.
Bertarido’s ambitious sister Eduige is in love with Grimoaldo, but, to her fury, he refuses to honour a promise to marry her.
Eduige intrigues with the Duke of Turin, Garibaldo, who pretends to be in league with Grimoaldo but craves power himself.

Bertarido is not dead.
He has returned in disguise and, hiding in a grove which contains his own memorial, erected by Grimoaldo, he witnesses an unpleasant scene: by taking Bertarido’s and Rodelinda’s son as hostage, Garibaldo forces Rodelinda to consent to marry Grimoaldo.

Now that Rodelinda has agreed to wed Grimoaldo, Garibaldo persuades Eduige to marry him instead.
Rodelinda asks Grimoaldo either to execute her son or Garibaldo – for she cannot be both mother of the legitimate heir to the throne and wife to its usurping tyrant.
Grimoaldo recoils.

Bertarido reveals himself to his sister Eduige.
He tells her that he no longer wants the throne, only his wife and son.
Sensing that this facilitates her own ambitions, Eduige agrees to help Bertarido to find Rodelinda.
As husband and wife are joyfully reunited, Grimoaldo appears and arrests Bertarido.

Grimoaldo is now tormented by his crimes and yearns for a simpler life.
While he is asleep, Garibaldo attempts to murder him, but Bertarido, who has escaped from prison, foils the attack and kills Garibaldo.
In gratitude, Grimoaldo yields the throne to Bertarido and renews his vows to Eduige.

What to listen for

As always in Handel’s operas, what should matter to an audience is not so much every twist and turn of the plot, but an awareness of the emotional states which each aria represents.

Rodelinda’s music offers a soprano a wide range of contrasting emotions, but it is Bertarido (originally a castrato role, now given to counter-tenors) who sings the single most beautiful and celebrated number in the opera, ‘Dove sei?’, as he stands by his own memorial lamenting the absence of his beloved wife.
The Victorians loved this melody, and made it famous out of its operatic context as a consolatory sacred aria, with a new text and title, ‘Art thou troubled?’.

Unusually among Handel’s operas, there is in Grimoaldo an important role for a tenor.
It was specially written for Francesco Borosini, a popular Italian singer for whose voice Handel also adjusted the mezzo-soprano part of Sesto in
Giulio
Cesare.

In performance

The opera is set in seventh-century Milan – not a period easy to represent convincingly on stage.
In an attempt to escape the usual Louis XIV or XV solution, the 1998 Glyndebourne production, directed by Jean-Marie Villégier, set the opera in a vaguely Fascistic environment, doubtless inspired by the tyrannical tendencies of Grimoaldo and Garibaldo, and suggested that the opera was a satire on the psychotic folly of those who stalk the corridors of power.
But
Rodelinda
contains none of the comedy obviously intended in
Giulio
Cesare
and perhaps it is an opera best taken seriously, at its own face value.

Recording

Video: Andreas Scholl (Bertarido); William Christie (cond.).
Glyndebourne production.
Warner 398 423 0243

Ariodante

Three acts. First performed London, 1735.

Anonymous libretto

In 1734, after losing his base at the King’s Theatre, Haymarket, Handel moved to the Covent Garden Theatre (on the site of today’s Royal Opera House) and proceeded to brave the competition with
Ariodante
and
Alcina,
two spectacular operas with prominent ballet sequences in each act, designed to show off the charms and ankles of the French dancer Marie Sallé.

Based on a story-line in Ariosto’s verse epic
Orlando
Furioso,
Ariodante
is set in Edinburgh, though there is no local Scottish colour in the opera to ratify the location.
The plot contains parallels to the intrigues surrounding Claudio and Hero in Shakespeare’s
Much
Ado
About
Nothing,
though it is highly unlikely that either Handel or his librettist were aware of them.

Plot

Ginevra, daughter of the King of Scotland, is happily betrothed to the wandering knight Ariodante.
But Polinesso, Duke of Albany, is determined that he shall be the one to marry Ginevra and ascend the throne.
He enlists the help of her infatuated lady-in-waiting Dalinda in a scheme designed to disillusion Ariodante, persuading Dalinda to dress up as Ginevra and enter his bedroom.
Ariodante witnesses this apparent adultery and leaves the court in despair.
The king rejects his daughter as a harlot, and Ginevra faints away at the news that Ariodante has killed himself.

But Ariodante secretly returns to the court and rescues Dalinda from assassins sent by Polinesso, who wishes to be rid of her.
A grateful Dalinda explains the deception to Ariodante, who presents himself before the king to fight for Ginevra’s honour.
Polinesso is killed, and the lovers are reunited.

What to listen for

Originally written for a castrato, the title role has over the last thirty years become a great vehicle for star mezzo-sopranos such as Janet Baker, Tatyana Troyanos, Ann Murray, Anne-Sofie von Otter and Lorraine Hunt Lieberson.
Alongside coloratura showpieces such as ‘Con l’ali di costanza’ and ‘Dopo notte’ with its two-octave scale, the part also contains one of Handel’s most intense and moving inspirations, ‘Scherza, infida’, sung in Act II as Ariodante reflects on Ginevra’s apparent betrayal.
Here is an aria which not only tests a singer’s ability to sustain a smooth line, but also offers a wonderful opportunity to show how, by colouring and decoration, the repeated melodic material can be made to chart an emotional journey.

In performance